Knowing and Wanting
by StupidityNowOffersWisdom
Summary: Real or not, they don't know anymore. Akirai; post tenth episode.


**Knowing and Wanting**  
_Real or not, they don't know anymore._

His awakening is a rude one, and he curses the fact that he's still hooked up to those dratted hospital machinery; he's never quite liked needles and their larger, intravenous counterparts. And he wonders, why he's here in the first place. But first, he has to know, if whatever he's seeing is real or not.

Real, or not, he doesn't know, he no longer knows, and he wants to know.

_Mirai._ That is his first thought after that.

_What happened to her?_

He gazes around the room, and his gaze settles on a familiar pair of glasses, comfortably sat on a chair beside his bed.

"Kuriyama-san," he breathes, and reaches for the worn plastic frames. He fingers the glasses, a dull pain beating within his torso, and he wonders, whatever happened to her, and just why he's trapped within the four sterilised walls of a hospital ward.

And somewhere, deep within him, something whispers, that this is her doing, and it's her fault he's here.

* * *

Fond memories seem to surface whenever he makes contact with those glasses of hers, and he wonders, yet again, where she is.

_Surely she'd not disappear without her glasses._

Real or not, he still doesn't know. _Perhaps she has spares?_

He doesn't want to question too much right now, and he wants answers. Real, down-to-earth answers that'll tell him everything he's missed, everything he wants to know, and everything about Mirai.

And again, that something whispers, and pulls him to the window of the ward, and like a child seeing his first winter, he presses his face to the glass, and toys with his breath, fogging up the window. Fogging up not just the window before him, but his mind, and the pain that never did seem to subside, no matter how much painkiller they dripped into his veins. And the only thing the snowflakes that float past him and collect at the edges of the window do is to remind him of lost perfection, embodied in one Kuriyama Mirai.

Far in the distance, a speck of pink, red and black appears, and bounds towards the direction of the hospital. He wants to think it's Mirai, pink hair flying up in an ungraceful manner as she chases down yet another Youmu, scimitar at the ready. He wants to think it's Mirai, bundled in heavy winter clothing as she rushes to the hospital to see him again. He wants to think it's Mirai, no matter what.

He wants to think, she hasn't died for him.

But she has, and everything he sees, apart from her last trace - those glasses - is gone.

Kuriyama Mirai is no more. Or is she?

* * *

She thinks he's dead. Or alive. She doesn't know.

She doesn't know if she was successful with extracting the Kyoukai no Kanata from Akihito. She doesn't know if Nase Izumi was manipulating her. She doesn't know if she'll ever be forgiven. She doesn't know if she'll see Kanbara Akihito again. She doesn't know anything now.

And the only thing she knows is that yet again, the blood on her hands, is of someone she once loved, and will never stop loving.

* * *

He hears the whisper once more, and he submits to its beckons.

Staggering out of the ward, he clumsily manoeuvres the countless identical corridors of both his mind and body, and finally, steps out into winter's embrace. It chills him, and he can almost feel his body freezing - but he has to do this, and he will. That is one thing he knows.

The mass of pink, red and black _is_ Mirai, and now, she's only a couple metres away from him.

He turns to meet her stunned gaze, and nothing needs to be said. They're alive, and that is all that matters (other than the fact that she's wearing the glasses he ordered for her birthday, that is).

She wants to say something, but her mouth only manages to open, and close itself in defeat. She doesn't know what to say, after almost killing him, and herself. She doesn't know what to do, in front of him anymore. She doesn't even know what the words _do I look like a normal person to you?_ and _bespectacled beauty_ mean to her any longer.

And he, too, is lost for words. There's so much he wants to ask. There's so much he wants to know. And there's just too much temptation, to just rush forward and hold her in his embrace (and steal some of her warmth, perhaps by means of her lips).

He resigns to grinning stupidly, and asking those heartbreaking words. The words are almost like a special language to them both, and only they know the true meaning behind it.

"Hey, Kuriyama-san, do I look like a normal person to you?"

She chokes back her tears and a scream, and dashes forward to complete that one task in the dream that she never did complete.

Two hearts reunite in the wintry morning, two hearts understand, and the two hearts know, for sure, that _this_ is real.


End file.
